What is Isometric Drafting

In any kind of manufacturing product design plays very important role. Product is always in 3 dimensions while design, if on paper, can always exist in 2 dimensions. There are some engineering drafting method for representing 3 dimensional measures in 2 dimensional paper.

Isometric Drafting or Isometric Projection is engineering designing method for representing 3 dimensional objects in 2 dimensions. In normal 2d drawing, all drawing goes along with any 2 axes which are at 90 degree from each other. In isometric drawings drawing is done with respect to all 3 axes those meet each other at 120 degree.

Isometric View of Cube

Thinking isometric view becomes easiest with 3d shape CUBE.

Consider a cube with length of each side as 1 unit and facing with one of surfaces.

Only square shape is viewable in this view. Now turn the cube in 45 degree around vertical axis and 35.264 degree around horizontal axis.

Now this is an isometric view of cube.

One of the corners of cube becomes centre of view. 3 visible sides which are square are seen as parallelograms. All of those parallelograms have same area.

This view is most basic isometric view and it can serve a starting point for drawing more complex views in isometric projection.

Key Points about Isometric Drafting

Isometric view gives reader good view of object or assembly in 3d. This feature makes it easy to understand the complex shapes of objects and there assembly/fittings with other complex objects. That’s why isometric drawing is very popularly used in mechanical industries for representation of parts and products.

Isometric drafting follows parallel projection and true measures which is different from perspective drawing. In isometric, a line goes parallel till horizon while in perspective lines converge towards horizon. A human eye gives us perspective drawing picture. This is major difference and limitation of isometric drawing. Because of this limitation, there are some shapes can be drawn with isometric which are practically impossible.